Time of the Stones

by Fred Rothganger

  At the far end stood a more imposing building, maybe a temple or civic center. This must be the place to find answers. She crossed the grass and stood at the enormous wood doors. What ritual to enter?

  She spread her body against the wood and listened. Inside, several people were arguing.

  A little girl ran up, babbled something at Susan, then laughed and darted away.

  The doors creaked on their hinges. Susan hopped back. They swung open to reveal an imposing entourage, some ten women dressed in brightly colored ceremonial gowns. Leading them was a late-middle-aged woman wearing a feathered headdress. An embroidered cape wrapped her shoulders. She raised a hand toward Susan and said something.

  It would be rude not to answer. “Please, madam, I don’t understand your language.”

  She lowered her hand and jabbered with her fellow elders.

  Something caught Susan’s eye. Around the leader’s neck hung a gold chain with a large irregular gemstone attached. It sparkled in all the colors of the rainbow, almost alive, rippling and shifting even when still.

  Susan gasped, “No!” Her eyes grew large with horror. She lunged and grasped the gem, straining the gold chain around the woman’s neck.

  The leader grabbed her wrist with one hand and sent a crushing blow across her face with the other. The women around shouted in anger and grabbed her elbows.

  Susan released the gem. No, no, it can’t be true.

  The group surrounded her. On the field, other women converged toward them. It was turning into a mob.

  Susan needed some credentials, fast. For lack of anything better, she muttered a command and morphed to bird. The matriarchs let go of her and drew back in fear. Susan stretched her wings high and emitted an ear-piercing screech. They cringed.

  Susan morphed back to human, walked to the side of the building and wrote on the wall with her finger. The crowd watched in silence.

  The first picture showed two triangles, each with a stick figure inside. Leaving some space, the second picture showed a single triangle with a stick figure. Next to it was a pile of small ragged objects. In grand hand gestures, Susan patted the stick figure then pointed to herself. She patted the pile of fragments and pointed straight at the necklace around the Matriarch’s neck. Susan repeated the sequence two more times.

  The Matriarch slipped off her necklace and held it out.

  Susan took it by the chain, studied it for a moment. With her free hand she smacked the picture of fragments yet again.

  The woman gestured toward the door of the hall.

  Susan took the hint and walked into the building. The entourage of matriarchs followed. At the far end of the hall on a raised table sat a pile of crystalline fragments, shards of many shapes and sizes. Some were perfectly clear. Others shimmered and sparkled.

  Only leftovers. A full load of shards could not possibly fit on the table, or it would collapse under the weight.

  Susan placed the necklace on the altar next to the other fragments. There were no words, no ceremony equal to the moment. “Oh Celeste, were you afraid when they came for you? Did you feel pain?” Susan’s own illusion of immortality lay shattered.

  * * *

  It took two weeks to learn the language well enough to understand their stories. The Matriarch said, “This is the War of the Stones. Our ancestors, the people you call the Ancients, grew numerous on this land. There were plentiful rain and fertile soil. They burned the forest to open land for crops. There was always enough food.

  “Then the Dark Times came. The rains failed. The soil which seemed so fertile was thin and empty without the forest. Many starved. In desperation, some traveled to survive. They crossed the water to the Southern Islands, a place where the sun does not set in summer and does not rise in winter.

  “They built a nation there, and our paths slowly grew apart. The rains returned to us and the forest sprang up again. We found the Stone on this mountain and learned the secrets of our ancestors. With wood to burn, we built machines to make our lives comfortable, and spread from the mountains to the sea. When there was no more room to expand, we looked to the South.

  “They also found a Stone. They did not have our resources, yet they refused to bow. They saw their Stone as a source of wisdom and took great pride in their nation. We desired to humble them, so we made a weapon to destroy it.

  “Our army crossed the water and walked into their capital. They were no match for our might. We marched up to their Temple of Knowledge. The weapon sang to the Stone, and the Stone sang back. The sound grew loud enough to split the mountains, and the Stone shattered.”

  Susan gasped. “Two sisters ...”

  The Matriarch continued, “We burned the forest faster and faster until once again it was gone. Without fuel, the engines of our empire ground to a halt. We became hungry. We grew angry with the priestesses. Evil men saw the chance to seize power. They said that knowledge had brought this disaster.

  “On a dark and horrible day they came to this university and slaughtered our teachers and scientists. They found the weapon and in a wild orgy of ignorance they turned it on the Stone. Forgive us, Guardian!”

  Susan stared numbly. “My sister was foolish to tell you everything you asked.”

  “We lost knowledge, and even ignorance no longer rules us. We are small, only villages scattered across this land. But now the forest has returned. We long for the secrets of the Ancients so we can grow into a great nation again—”

  “Then you have learned nothing.” Susan leaped to her feet and stared fiercely at the circle of matriarchs. “You want another chance, but you are victims of the same madness that drove your ancestors. If I give you knowledge, will you come destroy me too?”

  No one answered.

  “Do you still have the weapon?”

  The Matriarch went to the altar and lifted the tablecloth. The abomination resembled a jackhammer, about 1.5 meters long and 15 centimeters in diameter. Two rails protruded from opposite sides and ran parallel to the body for about half a meter, probably designed for two strong men to lift.

  Wires dangled from the top. Susan surmised it must contain a voice coil of some sort, tuned to resonate with the Stone. It must have been loud beyond human endurance. How could anyone operate it?

  “Come to the mountain. We will offer a sacrifice for your sins.” Susan hefted the weapon onto her shoulder and walked out. The matriarchs followed her up the trail to the platform. Such walks were a frequent part of their ceremonies.

  Susan put the weapon in the middle of the erosion shadow left by the Stone. “This is a new age, and you must learn new ways. The first truth is that growth and domination only lead to destruction. Be content with who you are now.”

  She morphed to a dendroid. The weapon disappeared into its trunk, providing an easily-digested source of metals for new mobiles. A fist-sized pellet formed under the leaf. Her voice came from the tree. “Take this seed to the Southern Islands and give it to your kin. Then, and only then, will the tree of knowledge bear fruit for you.”

  Journey North

  Year 10, Day 94

  Two Stones destroyed in so many centuries. Did the others meet a similar fate? What was the condition of the planet? Susan no longer had the patience for a leisurely world tour on the wings of a bird. She rushed to construct a new satellite.

  The first instruments used to study the Earth were little more than cameras taking pictures of visible light. As time progressed the Ancients developed many clever and sophisticated ways to measure things: the mixture of gasses in the atmosphere, movement, vegetation, temperature, ice thickness, distance to ground, even the gravity field.

  Susan picked instruments that seemed most useful in the present. To carry them all, she took the largest system bus recipe and doubled it. The main “eye” was a telescope big enough to resolve down to a few centimeters. An extra set of solar panels helped to power everything. It was more like a small space station than a satellite.

  A polar orbit would be
best. On the day side it arced from south to north at high noon. On the dark side it followed midnight. Meanwhile the Earth rotated under it. It passed over her location about twice each day. There would only be a few minutes to download data and send commands before it dropped below the horizon.

  Most of the intelligence to process that data had to be on the satellite itself. She added an onboard computer bigger than anything the Ancients ever put into space, big enough to hold several beings like herself. It used a quantum-optical core similar to the Stone, combined with enough high-speed memory to hold several days’ worth of raw data.

  Ship got redesigned with dual engine cavities to carry the extra weight. He launched from a new runway in the Southern Desert, surrounded by a forest of dendroids that extended to the horizon.

  Susan sent commands to image the area around each of the Stones. The planet had three southern continents, plus a chain of islands around the south pole. She knew the Stone near the pole was already gone, and indeed the images showed an empty place where it should be.

  The smallest of the southern continents, known to the Ancients as ‘Australia’, was a blistering desert with little greenery except along the coast and the shores of an inland sea. They had placed the Stone near the center of the desert on an enormous rust-colored sandstone formation. It was still there, with no sign of human activity. Susan felt grateful she had not drawn that assignment.

  The largest of the southern continents, ‘Africa’, contained a range of old volcanic mountains, bordered on one side by a deep rift valley, and on the other by a rain-fed plain. Water had slowly eroded away the lava dome for millions of years. The Ancients placed a Stone on one of the broad flat peaks.

  It was gone. One of the cones had erupted in the last thousand years. New lava flows swept across the position of the Stone. Even if it could survive the heat of a wood fire, it could not possibly endure the ferocious onslaught of molten rock.

  The final northern continent was by far the largest on the planet, actually a conjunction of multiple tectonic plates. The Ancients assigned it two Stones.

  The one in the west had remained near the facility where the Stones were built, secreted away in a mountain range. There was a small city in that valley, surrounded by denuded forest. This must have been a source of smoke she had measured in the atmosphere. Like others before it, this upstart civilization probably collapsed when its wood supply ran out.

  No Stone was visible from space, nor did the signature of its materials show up on the spectrometer. This place required a visit.

  The eastern Stone once rested on a ridge overlooking a floodplain. The mountains drained into narrow valleys that opened onto a broad wash. Fingers of green spread from the mouth. The peaks had served as the border between three nations, each of which took its turn on the stage of world history. Now a new nation was growing.

  The Stone had moved about 100 kilometers north. It was on the plain, surrounded by a large city. An extraordinary place! At night it glowed like the cities of the Ancients. It appeared to have several industrial complexes and even an airfield.

  That much industry could not be sustained on wood alone, yet wood is what they seemed to have. Naked earth was spreading across the continent like an infection. Near the edge were rows of small domes giving off carbon dioxide and soot, probably charcoal kilns. A railroad led back to the city, bearing strings of cars loaded with chunks of fuel.

  At one industrial complex, smoke from cooling towers trailed in the wind. The spectrometer revealed water vapor and carbon dioxide, typical for the fires of industry. The plume from the largest complex told a different story, steam without fire. This civilization was advanced beyond any the Earth had seen in a long time.

  The eastern Stone was definitely the first place for a visit. Susan downloaded a flight path into Ship’s mind.

  He asked, Where is Rocket?

  No Rocket this time. You and I are going to the other side of the world.

  Joy.

  Go!

  He lifted off and banked north, passing over the Long River Basin at a leisurely pace of Mach 3. Too slow.

  This is more fuel-efficient. Going far is just as great an achievement as going fast.

  Ship sent an image of himself sitting on the runway waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting, for the go command. Perhaps equivalent to a bored yawn.

  Ship did not have anything like a cockpit. In the virtual world Susan stood on top, just a little back from his nose, like riding a supersonic surfboard. The construct showed everything that Ship saw and heard, augmented by a heads-up display with maps and instruments. A small stand provided some basic controls.

  Ship, let me fly for a while.

  Yield.

  Susan took the joystick. The craft rocked. Their altitude wavered up and down. Ship’s consciousness flitted around, worrying about every little deviation. With several minutes practice, she produced something resembling straight and level flight. You make this look so easy.

  The Arctic Ocean glowed softly with reflected moonlight. A thin layer of ice had formed over the salt water. Above, brilliant stars shone through the thin cold air. Curtains of green and red light rippled in the sky.

  What a remarkable place the North must be! Humans used to populate it with mythical creatures and a benevolent god who delivered gifts once a year. Then it became a summer vacation spot for those who could afford the journey. What was it now? Perhaps people on the northern shores sailed back and forth to each other, trading goods.

  Ship, take back control.

  Relief.

  The sun broke above the rim of the Earth. Below, the north shore of a new continent came into view.

  Ship asked, How will we land?

  We’re going to crash.

  Objection. Revulsion.

  You won’t feel any pain, I promise.

  They flew for about 30 more minutes, then Susan ordered, Cut engines.

  Ship stopped the flow to the injectors in the engine cavity, and gradually reshaped for glide. The swarm absorbed the remaining liquid fuel. He said, I feel radar.

  They must have some primitive air-traffic control. Doubtless we are visible to them.

  They drifted across the denuded region that surrounded the city, losing speed and altitude. Susan directed Ship toward a small glade hidden inside the forest.

  She said, Sleep now.

  Ship relinquished consciousness and went into storage at Stonehill.

  The mindless hull glided above the trees at about 50 kilometers per hour. Susan sent a final command, and it separated into pieces. The dragon scales formed groups of four, held together at the center by a blob of swarm. They fluttered down like seed pods, angling their scales this way or that to drift near the rest of the group.

  The first-stage engine and cryo tank fell together until they smacked into the canopy. They cracked apart and tumbled through the branches to the ground.

  The swarm pulled itself together in the small clearing and took the shape of four dendroids. They stacked the scales into neat blocks and wrapped them for safekeeping. One of the dendroids began gestating an avatar. A few minutes later Susan emerged.

  She clambered a short way through the woods to where the first-stage engine fell. The bell was bent. Ragged pieces of plumbing stuck out the top where it had torn away from the cryo tank. She grabbed the engine, dragged it back to the clearing and put it in the care of a dendroid.

  She returned for the cryo tank. A mixture of gaseous and liquid oxygen sputtered from the broken pipes. All the controls were designed to be operated by Ship’s matrix, but they were easy enough for a human hand to move. She pulled a lever and vented the tank. Liquid sprayed from the valve. The surrounding foliage froze instantly under a roiling sea of oxygen.

  “Sorry.” It seemed necessary to ask forgiveness for so much death, though the plants themselves were in no position to offer it. She dragged the empty tank back to the clearing and put another dendroid on it.

  Susan started the
long walk to the city, loaded down with as much fat as she could stand to carry. That is, only enough to look plump, not gross. Being pretty was part of the job, after all.

  She broke into open country and found a road to follow. Houses stood a few hundred meters apart. Between them were long fields, interspersed with irrigation ditches branched from the river. A man and a boy wore harnesses and trudged forward, dragging a V-shaped plow. A woman held the handles and drove it through the soil.

  Satellite images showed a logging operation several kilometers to the west. A spur of the rail system served it, hauling fuel back to the city. She hoped to catch a ride and save some time.

  People laboring in the fields gave her strange looks as she walked by. She smiled and waved. They immediately turned back to their work.

  Susan viewed her body as a statement about Ancient values: outrageously sexy and people just had to deal with it. She especially enjoyed offending patriarchal authoritarian creeps—all part of the service.

  Time to swallow her pride. This place was a mystery, and she needed to understand it better before deciding what kind of therapy they needed. Better stay invisible for a few weeks, learn the language and explore. She pretended to look ahead, all the while filming the peasants from the corner of her eye and guessing about their customs.

  Smoke hung like a sign in the sky, pointing to the charcoal kilns and the hoped-for train ride. Around noon she came upon them, large metal cylinders on small stilts. Each one had a smokestack at one end and a crude cast-iron door at the other.

  She moved swift and silent among them, and found men working. They opened the door and began unloading black chunks straight into a waiting train car. At the next kiln over, men packed fresh-cut wood into the empty space inside. It was an efficient operation, filling the train in sequence and reloading kilns as they went.

  The wood went into an inner chamber, surrounded by a hollow wall. Ah, not exactly kilns. They burned the wood’s own gasses to cook it—even more efficient.